Samus Aran sits in a mostly empty room of an office building on the planet Anadyr V. A glowing lamp provides the only light in the room, a small aurora near on the northwest side of the room. She looks into a HoloVision, watching the latest news. A Galactic Federation cruiser, Nova Lord, has disappeared in the Tetra Galaxy, near the outskirts of the planet Arcterra, in the Alimbic cluster. The last known contact was three days ago, when Federation commando Ron Wyatt issued a distress signal, indicating that the mysterious faction known as the Crimson Hunters was responsible. However, while the faction is well known, the leader is only unknown to members of the Crimson Hunters, as prisoners taken by the faction never made it out alive. Tired, the veteran turns off the HoloVision and staggers towards an office. , where she sits on a metal hoverchiar. She turns the chair and looks at the horizon of Anadyr V. The city is like a machine; never stops at any time, is constantly in motion and can only be truly disrupted if the planet were to be invaded by an enemy faction. The planet itself was neutral; he refused to be part of the Federation or the Hunters. Instead, he wanted to help everyone by providing both sides with a means of industrial operations. However, to avoid all-out conflict, the Treaty of Anadyr provided that if conflict arose, the aggressors would be severely punished economically. The treaty had been respected most of the time; however, it was nearly broken by conflict shortly before the Gorea Crisis a year earlier. A loud beeping interrupts Samus' thought process. The veteran turns in his chair to face a blackened figure, hidden among the shadows of...... middle of paper ...... a fighter appears and opens fire. Samus is hit in the shoulder, incapacitating her. As the fighter closes in for the kill, several laser blasts obliterate him in a blazing fire. Samus' gunship roars and lands, piloted by Galactic Federation Corporal Tavish Preston. The experienced pilot was hired by Samus Aran shortly after the end of the Gorea Crisis and the destruction of Oubliette. Preston exits the gunship and notices that Aran is incapacitated. He picks her up and onto the gunship, but not before noticing a data card on the spacepad. He picks up the map and slips it into his pocket before carrying the incapacitated bounty hunter to his gunship. The ship takes off, far from Metropolitan Petroplask and outside the atmosphere of Anadyr V. The ship jumps into hyperspace, en route to the planet Daiban, capital planet of the Galactic Federation..